I learned to embroider when I was a kid, when everyone was really into cross stitch (remember the '80s?). Eventually, I migrated to surface embroidery, teaching myself with whatever I could get my hands on...read more
Contact Mary
I learned to embroider when I was a kid, when everyone was really into cross stitch (remember the '80s?). Eventually, I migrated to surface embroidery, teaching myself with whatever I could get my hands on...read more
Contact Mary
March 22, 2012
Methinks today is a good day to give away a very nice goldwork embroidery book, called Goldwork Embroidery: Designs and Projects by Australian embroiderer, Mary Brown. You’re very welcome to ready my review of Goldwork Embroidery if you like. It was written in the days before my more in-depth approach to book reviews, but the essentials are there, and my opinion of the book hasn’t changed any!
March 21, 2012
When I played with the detached chain stitch and the ribbed spider web stitch a couple weeks ago, to create the Chain Stitch Spider Daisy, a reader wrote and asked if there was a way to make the flower domed rather than flat.
So today, for Stitch Play, let’s look at the Raised Spider Daisy! Now, the concepts involved in creating this domed spider daisy are found in other raised stitches (for example, in raised satin stitch dots), so you can actually apply these concepts to creating all kinds of domed elements in your embroidery.
This is what we’re going to create in today’s Stitch Play:
March 20, 2012
More goldwork dots today! But I think it’s the last time I’m going to show them to you.
You see, I’m musing about how much of the Medallion Project to show you these days. I don’t want to bore you to death with the slow progress!
And it is slow progress. All hand embroidery is slow progress, compared to what we’ve become used to with machines to do all our work. The slowness of it – the whole “journey” of any handwork project – is part of the appeal of handwork. Whipping out the Medallion on a machine wouldn’t be quite the same! And in fact, it couldn’t be the same. Many of the elements of this project can only be achieved by hand. And even those that could be achieved by machine wouldn’t look the same. So the progress is slow, and I can live with that.
But can you?!
March 19, 2012
What’s your favorite element involved in hand embroidery? Are you:
A. an Accessories Advocate, irresistibly drawn to the tools and trinkets that are used by the embroiderer?
B. a Fabric Fanatic, mesmerized by any woven surfaces upon which embroidery can be performed?
C. a Thread Junkie, with a Thread Fixation that keeps you addicted to needlework?
If I had to choose only one of the three above, I’d have to say I’m a Thread Junkie. I just love embroidery thread!
March 17, 2012
Since it’s St. Patrick’s Day, let’s meander through some green embroidery stuff together, shall we? Clicking the photos will take you to the articles related to them.
March 16, 2012
If you’re looking for a way to add a bit of texture and sparkle to your needlework, how about a bit of bead embroidery? There are many hand embroidery stitches that can be used in conjunction with beads, to create textured lines or fillings. One of my favorites is the Palestrina stitch.
The Palestrina stitch is already a textured stitch, as it forms a string of nice, fat knots along the line of stitching. It’s a magnificent stitch for creating a textured line, and once you get the rhythm of the stitch, it’s an easy and fun stitch to work! It’s the same stitch used in twilling, a stitching technique popular among quilters in the Midwest, which is essentially embroidering blocks using Palestrina stitch.
In today’s Stitch Play, we’re going to add some beads to Palestrina Stitch.
March 15, 2012
Approaching the gold dots on the outer edge of the Medallion design, I decided that they should tie in with the center goldwork area on the Tudor-style roses that surround the Medallion. The center of the dots, then, should be filled with a goldwork embroidery technique called chipping or chip work. This involves cutting up tiny bits of check purl and sewing the bits down by taking the needle and thread through them and sewing them down like beads, in a random fashion, until the area is filled up.
